And "enough."
Aris watched from a ridge as the harvesters descended. The great carousel formed—thousands of Cygiso overlapping, rotating slowly. They began their weight-language, but faster than she'd ever seen. A staccato of thuds and lifts, a percussion of presence.
Not sound. Syntax of mass. Each weight-shift was a word. Each cluster was a sentence. A heavy thud meant here . A light drift meant there . A sequence of three heavies meant danger . A rapid alternating pattern meant join . cygiso
Then the ground shook.
A Cygiso was a translucent, gelatinous disk about the size of a dinner plate, drifting a meter above the violet moss. It had no eyes, no mouth, no apparent organs. But it had mass—exquisite, variable, intentional mass. A Cygiso could make itself as light as a pollen grain to ride thermals, or as heavy as a lead ingot to sink into the spongy ground and hibernate. And "enough
She understood then. The Cygiso had no word for "I"—but they had no word for "kill," either. They had no word for "enemy." Only for "join" and "here" and "danger."
The Odyssey arrived within a year. Not a science vessel—a harvester. They lowered nets and vacuum pumps, intending to collect Cygiso by the thousand and ship them to bio-weapons labs. A staccato of thuds and lifts, a percussion of presence
Aris watched the Cygiso settle back into their slow, silent carousel. They did not pursue. They did not gloat. They simply returned to their conversation: heavy, light, here, safe, we, we, we.